Currently, a mobile station that provides voice communications has a call waiting feature that allows a user engaged in a telephone call to respond to another incoming voice call by suspending the current telephone call and switching to the new call. Typically, this can be done by pushing the flash button on a keypad of the mobile station. For important calls that can't be interrupted, the user can temporarily disable call waiting by pressing an appropriate key before placing the call. However, in this case the user may receive no information that a received call was missed.
If the user does not disable the call waiting function but simply ignores the new call during an active voice session, the calling party will receive no feedback as to whether the called party is aware of the call, and no information about availability of the called party. Similarly, if the called party is engaged in a data communication session or is busy and cannot answer the call, no feedback will be provided to the calling party.
Hence, the need still exists for a more effective technique to handle incoming voice calls when a called party cannot answer the call. In particular, there is a need to provide a communication station with a mechanism that would enable a called party to provide a desired feedback to a calling party, when the called party cannot answer an incoming voice call.